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What is sin; where does it come from?

Posted 13 months ago|41 comments|543 views
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Sin causes death. God causes Life. The opposite of sin is life. The opposite of life is death. Sin is therefore death and God is life. This means that anything that causes life is of God. All that is good edifies and all that destroys is bad and consequently a sin. Think of sin as everything and anything, ideas, substance, actions that rob the human being of the Life that belongs to God that he has placed in us.

We all die because at some point our own genome betrays us. Cells don't stop growing. They are constantly replenished until a signal is given for them to stop doing so. This is the beginning of the process of death. God gives us life not death. This rogue signal is not of God it is inherited from some point in our very distant past. Since all people as far as we know die then it must be traced back to our first parents or more exactly to something that they did to introduce this rogue gene (signal), perhaps eating something that was not meant for human ingestion.

We still do that today. Alcoholism can become an inherited trait, so can obesity, heart disease, etc. all things that stem from some form of modified behavior. So in short, yes we can inherit sin or more accurately the cause of sin in other words we can inherit the cause of death and as everyone can see by the evidence around us, we have.
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COMMENTS
13 months ago: Now put that book of fiction away and tell me where sin comes from. Better start with what sin is without referencing a book written to create it.
2 months ago: No one needs to reference a book to bear witness to sin. All one has to do is take a good look at the world around us.
13 months ago: I didn't mention any books. What gave you the impression that I mentioned a book?
13 months ago: Where did you get the concept of sin?
13 months ago: I didn't get the concept of sin from anywhere; it just kept happening to me over and over until I finally got fed up of being screwed over and started looking for something to call it. Most people call it sin but secular people have a word for it too except their word is a lot less flavorful than the Christian variety. Ever heard of the expression, "$#!T Happens!" ? Where do you think it came from? Do you need a book to tell you that something really messed up is happening around the world and that its all interconnected and it all seems to stem from things that we have little or no control over but that somehow even our great grandchildren will pay for all this crap?
13 months ago: That's called life. Taking your supposed un-influenced definition of "sin", if someone looks at another human and feels the desire to have sex with that person, it's not the sin called lust? Lust being a sin according to that book you say didn't influence your definition. Under any other set of rules it is human nature, when you call it sin, it is religious dogma.

Or cohabitation. It is human nature to desire someone to be with them, it is only sin under religious terms.
13 months ago: Now who is using a book to define sin? My definition of sin is anything that leads to death, be it slowly or fast. By that standard you don't need to be religious or ever have read any holy books.
13 months ago: That is definitly called life.
13 months ago: Sin is our propensity to do wrong. It's wired into our very nature and there is only one remedy for it other than death.

When we genuinely strive for perfection and miss it, we sin. We miss the mark.

Some folks consider some things sins while others do not. Culture, religion, and our human nature itself often determine that which we choose to define as or choose to acknowledge as sin or not. Ultimately none of those provides the absolute definition.

We all have to deal with it whether we want to admit it or not. That does not change the fact.

Anything that steals, kills, or destroys in our lives is either a direct result of an indirect result of sin; A result of either our personal sin or that of others.

None of us can escape it totally. But the power of it can be broken in our lives.

It's just a matter of whom or what we are going to allow to run our lives.

That will determine, to the largest degree, sin's ability to negatively impact our life journey and potentially destroy whatever blessings we have enough vision and common sense to appreciate and be thankful for.
13 months ago: Sin is a religious term that conotates there will be consequences beyond what occurs while you are living. Karma is the belief that what you do affects everything that happens to you while you are alive with no after death consequences, consequences occur in your next life. While I don't believe in re-incarnation, I can believe that what you do affects what happens to you, if not in the exact same way as those who follow that particular religion.

If what is right and wrong is different for everyone, than it can't be described as sin because that whould mean that there is no limit to what a person can do because whatever you do is ok and you will achieve the prize or punishment.

Assigning sin to a newborn because that newborn has the propensity to be bad is ludicris. It has no ability to reason out the differences between doing right or wrong or what is moral, much less the physical ability to carry it out. That is just a way for humans to to pass the buck, it's the baby's fault!

As for striving for perfection and failing, it is not even wrong, to call it sin is just stupid.
13 months ago: I've heard it said that babies are born as angels, but as their legs get longer their wings get shorter.

I see babies as a moral blank slate. However, it is in our nature to break the rules as we get older. We are accountable to what we know. Each of us must deal with reality at the level of maturity that we find ourselves.

Accepting the fact that we all sin also mean we are accepting the fact that we are not perfect. There are times when we do right and there are times when we do wrong either by commission or omission. That's a hard pill for many to swallow.

That is all of us and makes all of us sinners. When we accept that fact we can work from there. Until that time however, there is no remedy.

Some folks simply can't or refuse to deal with guilt on any level so they create a reality in their own mind where there is no ultimate accountability to God, the universe or to anyone else. The only remedy for that is repentance.

Acknowledging personal sin and understanding how to repent is what enables humanity to survive and people to peacefully co-exist regardless of culture, religion or anything else.

Until we, as a human family, get to the point acknowledging when we sin (or miss it)against ourselves or against others, get to the point where we actually repent of wrong doing and either give or receive forgiveness, there will never be a time when there truly will be peace on earth.
13 months ago: Huey,
Before people like Sixholden can even acknowledge the existence of God they need to first come to understand that the universe is not a random, strewn, mess. People like him need to first see that existence is a careful balance that can and is calculated regularly, that if thrown out of balance by actions, thoughts or things that don't belong there that existence stops or slows. People like Sixholden need to first come to grip with giving a label to all these misplaced actions, things and thought that can wipe away life from the individual or the collective. Once they can put a label on it then they can identify it's source and if they can identify its source then the knowledge of its opposite, life, is not far behind.
13 months ago: Not going to happen. Before people like me will believe that there is a mind/plan behind the universe, we have to believe that such a being exists. We would first have to believe that there is a God. People like you believe that everything has to have been planned, that nothing could happen at random.

If I had been taught to believe everything I was told by certain people, maybe I would fall for the made up storys. Unfortunately for others, I was taught to question and determine for myself and not by my parents either, they are strict Christians, life taught me, the experiences I've had over the last 55 years.
13 months ago: Six,
You wanted to stay clear from a religious dogma and so I am. Here I present to you a very basic fact of reality, life and death. What leads to life is good. What leads to death is bad. The doings in our daily life are not all conducive to producing life. Life is living. Life is productive. Life grows. Life flourishes. Life is fulfilling and satisfying. Life is constructive. Anything that builds, edifies, makes better or whole is life. That which takes away from life is not and cannot be life. Anything that happens to us while we are alive that diminishes or detracts from our health is the opposite of life. What is the opposite of life? What do you call actions and thoughts that subtract from your life? If they take away from life then they can't be classified as life. Please don't keep returning to more complex religious ideas that I have not mentioned. If you want a definition of sin without relying on the bible then there you have it. Anything that takes life away and leads to death is a product of sin. Sin is death. If you think about punishment then you are thinking about religious doctrines. But exclude religion and what you have is sin is death and death is sin.
13 months ago: The entire problem is the term "sin". It is from and based on religion and religious beliefs that certain acts are wrong in the eys of whatever God the person believes in and doing them will prevent them from attaining the religious reward promised by whatever belief system they follow.

What you describe is purely the result of being alive. If you are alive and you continure to live you will eventually die from one or many causes. Sinful acts (as per religious beliefs) will not kill you physically, at least most of them won't. Sin will only kill the soul, not the body according to many beliefs.
13 months ago: Six,
You have relied entirely on religious beliefs to back up your view and this is coming from someone who claims not to believe in those views. Break those chains of dependency to established doctrine and allow yourself to think freely. I believe in God it's true but not because someone told me too. In fact I was an unbeliever half of my life. Sin is an apt word to describe the ills that weaken the strongholds of life. But even if you choose to call it something else that still doesn't change what that thing is and what it does. It causes death because it is death. But your problem is not what I choose to call it.

Your problem is that you can't stop thinking of it as a religious term that describes objectionable rituals for a Christian deity and if that's the case then you will never make the connection between the ills that befall humans that ultimately cause us our deaths. Your view that death is a part of life is also religious in case you failed to notice. All eastern disciplines ascribe to this notion. I ask you to please stop thinking in religious terms. That is what you asked of me and I have done so but you can't seem to follow your own advice. Leave the religious dogma behind and let's speak in terms of merely the physical and let's see exactly what comes of this discussion. Okay?
13 months ago: Sorry DJ, I relied on religious teaching for the definition of sin as the basis of my argument against the use of it as a term to describe what others were posting. From where else would I get the definition as used to 99.999999% of the world? If I was never exposed to religious beliefs/teachings, the word would never have been included in my vocabulary as a word to describe a wrongful act that has after death connotations. Just because I use knowledge gained by studying the other sides beliefs does not mean I hold those beliefs myself, hence my argument against the use of the term sin to describe the consequences of living.

If I didn't think freely, how would I argue against imaginary beings and the use of the wrong term to describe life?

Your problem is you can't separate religious beliefs from life without the restrictions of them. You can not think freely because you are limited by those beliefs.

Just what do you think my view of death is? Because I use others beliefs to describe what they think happens does not mean I believe in them. Maybe I have failed to communicate that I am only using others beliefs to make a point of how some view what is going on.

Can you? Can you actually leave the dogma behind and discuss anything without trying to drag "a guiding hand" or "an intelligence behind it all" into it?

Random occurrences are easy and hard to contemplate. Life is and then it isn't.

At one time humans believed in themselves and then they tried to describe the mystery of how they became to be there and religion was born in the minds of those who desired to rise above others, to be in control and then there were priests, or leaders who thought long and hard and created the dogma that began it all. The how and why other humans should obey the priest/leaders and then they invented the consequences of not obeying the beliefs they had invented and named it sin and it scared the poop out of all their followers and they stopped thinking for themselves and only did what they were told. Well, at least some of them, there is still me.
12 months ago: So you have got it all figured out. You know exactly how religion began and the motives of all its practitioners. You stand apart as the only sole conscientious objector and you're proud of that because it gives your life meaning amidst all the unpredictable chaos. Life is an accident maybe even a mistake and you consider yourself extremely lucky to have the precious time that you have and you would be a fool to consider giving even a second of that time to quacks who peddle false hopes. I get it! I'm not telling you should believe anything else. I'm not trying to scare you into a dogma by threatening an afterlife that you clearly do not believe in. You are fixed in your ways and I congratulate you for your resolve.
My point however has nothing to do with any of that. My point is to establish a premise for death. You keep saying that it's life but clearly death is not life. Death is the cessation of life. Death is not a part of life. Death works against life. And Life does not need death to continue. Life propagates without rhyme or reason. But death is close behind bighting at its heals and unlike life that just is death has a cause and effect. Death is the product of poor choices.

Death is a breaking down of cells because they were not used properly. There is nothing religious or philosophical about it. Death is because we will it to be. The vast majority of causes of death are the products of inherited disorders, life style choices, direct or indirect acts of others. Acts of nature and old age we can't control but all the rest we can and if you think that making poor choices is a part of life then you are dead wrong. Making poor choices is a result of misinformation and it is wrong. Get it? Doing stupid things for stupid reasons is wrong because it producers wrong outcomes. It's not about being punished by a deity at the end of your life. It is about you cutting your own life short because you made the wrong choices. The religious leaders aren't robing you of your life because you don't have to listen to them. You are robing your own life because you made life shortening decisions.
12 months ago: "We all die because at some point our own genome betrays us. Cells don't stop growing. They are constantly replenished until a signal is given for them to stop doing so. This is the beginning of the process of death. God gives us life not death. This rogue signal is not of God it is inherited from some point in our very distant past."

I what you said in your original post, now you say it is:

"Death is the product of poor choices.

Death is a breaking down of cells because they were not used properly."

Pick one or re-write it and incorporate all into one, in my opinion, wacky philosophy.

As for all that BS you said about "me", well it is very lonely at the top......


HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Like I'm some brainiac who has it all figured out and nothing ever causes me to pause and think. But yes, I do have it figured out for me and I don't need what you are trying to convince me I am "missing", and no, I won't live any longer than any other person who midly abuses his body with work and play and drugs (legal ones) and chemicals (food and drink) but I won't die any faster by continueing to live life my way either.
12 months ago: Sorry, should have proofed that a little better. "Is" what you said....... not "I"
12 months ago: There is no contradiction in what I wrote the cells in your body are not designed to break down. Life is designed to grow, just look around you. Life is abundant and plentiful even in the most arid of places. If life ceases to function and reproduce it is because of a trigger. There is something not original to that life form that causes it to stop growing, dividing and multiplying. That is not a philosophy that is scientific fact.

Accepting death is a philosophy. Every creature is born with the will to live, that you are so quickly and adamantly willing to accept death as inevitable is a product of your philosophy, your belief system, because every living thing thrives to live. You are trying to defend a belief system of accepting death because it allows you to enjoy things that shorten your life. It has nothing to do with accepting the natural cycle of things because there are many atheists who live wholesome lives without the abuse legal intoxicants and poisons.

They seek out life despite not believing in God. They are willing to acknowledge that things that shortens life may be wrong. You will not even do that because of your philosophy. That's okay you are entitled to have your own faith but don't be critical of the faith of others. Every faith is not about bleeding victims dry. If they were then you would have to include your own faith of "Death acceptance" into it and I don't think you consider yourself a greedy cult leader. Do you?
12 months ago: So you can't see your contradiction and think I am an abuser of legal drugs. No mater what we do, no matter what philosophy we follow, no matter how pure our food and drink may be (not sure who determines what is pure, but go with me on this), by simply continuing to breath, we shorten our biological life.

But you really don't want to discuss biological life, you want to discuss spiritual life and how to attain everlasting life that is not a torture, right? You will continue to attempt to draw me into the "why" I should accept your philosophy because mine is wrong in such and such a way and that I am "wrong" because your "book" says such and such and on and on and on and on until I get to point I won't be able to resist and fall wailing and repenting to the floor, not from actual sorrow and repentace but from frustration with the whole convoluted method of human foolishness.

Now that I got that off my puny little chest, I can go do my chores!

As for not being critical of others philosophy, that would be much to easy, I would be like a Jew in 1930's Germany, expecting things to get better and not living to ever see the horror stop. Telling me to NOT speak up when someone is saying things I don't agree with is tatamount to attempted censure. Not to be critical, in a friendly manner I hope, would be the same as agreeing to what is being said which means I am helping the other side even though I don't want to, and since that would be against my philosophy, I must speak up.

I could be a cult leader. Not that hard, there are several hundred thousand of them in this country already, they are called priest, preachers, rabi, minister, and several other titles.

At least in the "faith" you have labeled me with I am not alone, got about 6.8+ billion other members all in the same boat. Except you, of course, since you aren't going to die, ever.
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12 months ago: So does the concept of cellular death due to sin apply only to humans? What about all the other animals on the planet, plants , amoebas, etc.?
12 months ago: In short, yes. The cycle of life can be broken at any point and cause a chain reaction. I firmly believe that at some point in our collective distant past one wrong choice by our first parents set death going to affect all life around the world. It has been accepted as a moral tale by religious communities but as a historical account it has very deep implications. It means that all disease and death could potentially be traced back to a single source. We know viruses mutate and jump species. It is not farfetched to believe that all death began in such a manner from a single source. The bible says that sin is the transgression of God's law. If God is the creator then he created the natural laws that govern life. If we transgress those laws then we have sinned and transgressing those natural laws do inevitably cause death. Sin is death. Death is sin. As I told Sixholden , "You can take the Creator out of your life and pretend that he doesn't exist but you are still a created creature and you still live in a natural world that works because of natural laws and if you transgress those natural laws there is a consequence to your behavior. No God is punishing you. You are simply reaping the results of what you did or didn't do."
12 months ago: I re-iterate:

"Acknowledging personal sin and understanding how to repent is what enables humanity to survive and people to peacefully co-exist regardless of culture, religion or anything else."

Without at least those two actions, there will NEVER be the peace on earth or the humanistic utopia that the secular world yearns for but can never seem to come even close to achieving.

Like it or lump it. That's word up.
12 months ago: I agree 100%. People may deny the authority of the Creator but they can't deny the authority of the laws that govern the universe. Taking responsibility for our own culpability in what is wrong with our world is the first step to fixing it.
12 months ago: Being able to recognize that what a person is doing is wrong in context with fellow human beings and practicing methods that allow the peaceful co-existence with other human beings is how to achieve a better utopia. Since the word SIN has been claimed by the religious fanatics who believe in who konws what from one age to the next and by that claim have inferred after-death complications for those acts deemed sinful, wrong-doing cannot be described as SIN.

Repentace also has it's negatively religious failings as a word used to describe what a human must do to change its lifestyle to a more peaceful one but since you can repent to another your wrong doing without bringing any imaginary beings and everlasting existance in an imaginary place into the picture, I can work with it.

No matter what anyone says, you can not take the religious definition out of the word sin. It has been in use for much too long and is ingrained into the very fabric of language.
12 months ago: This whole debate is about your choice of words against my choice of words. Sin as far as I'm concerned doesn't get its definition from a spiritual book. Those book definitions come from people who have lived life and have observed cause and effect just like me. So stop putting sin in a spiritual context because once you have done that it ceases to be relevant to the physical world.

Sin is that which damages the process of life and yes it is prevalent all over the world. It has been inherited in the form of diseases, genetic disorders and behavioral traits and people keep giving it more power by participating in activities that shorten life.

Life exists in dependent cycles which is why others around you suffer for your sins as well as you do. If you smoke everyone who is around you will suffer from second hand smoke. Animals lose their habitat because we use it for our exclusive use. Would-be pandemics, such as the avian flu, mad cow disease and the west Nile virus are all the products of human mis-activity in nature. This by my definition is sin.

You can take the Creator out of your life and pretend that he doesn't exist but you are still a created creature and you still live in a natural world that works because of natural laws and if you transgress those natural laws there is a consequence to your behavior. No God is punishing you. You are simply reaping the results of what you did or didn't do.
12 months ago: DJ, Please pick another word to describe your version of what causes death. The religious groups already claim the three letter word you want to use and it will forever be used to denote an act or thought that results in eternal damnation in an imaginary place some time in the near or far future. Neither you nor I can separate it from that and as long as you use it in the context you are attempting to, it will just label you a religious fanatic who is trying to slip slide around and come in the back door to prove your point that the Bible is not written by an imaginary being, Original Sin is real and everyone is subject to the religious doctrine as espoused by you and those of your type. SIN is and has been a religious word for as long as religion that doesn't worship the Natural World has been forced upon humans, as in Christianity.

As for me being a "created creature", I'll accept that only in the context that my parents had sex and therefore created me by one providing the egg and the other provided the sperm.

Contradiction you need to work out - how can it be a natural world if it was created? That would be an un-natural world. Your belief in Natural Laws are the proof that you are conflicted and don't really believe in creation theory as strongly as you want others to think.

I live in a natural world in my natural body that was "created" by the natural process of mating and birth from other bodies that were created by the same process for the last few million years. How they evolved is still a mystery in some regards but someday the mystery will be solved without the wild idea that some magical being interfered in the life processes, processes that came about by chance, luck, or some other heretofore undiscovered cause.
12 months ago: "wrong-doing cannot be described as SIN."

Yes it can. You may reject the term but that does not change the fact.

Also Six, you need to decide whether you are an atheist or an agnostic. You seem to unkowingly hop from one side of the fence to the other from time to time.
12 months ago: Huey, I climp, hop and fall all over the fence. I've even been known to lean on it at times. That's one of the joys of not being tied to a religious philosophy someone else invented to bind others to them.
12 months ago: Six - Yours is a good soul. Flip floppy but good.

Personally I don't have a problem with the relationship Jesus gives me to bind or tie myself to Him. That kind of bondage or union is the type that liberates one from the beggarly and depraved elements of this world. I'm cool with that.

Like I've said before, I'm not religious and I don't play church. Christ is my heartbeat and expanding His family and helping the hurting is my life's mission. That's my joy.

Each of us has their own life journey. Best wishes on yours.
12 months ago: I can't make you NOT believe in God Sixholden. If you are conflicted about his existence that is your burden to bear not mine. Personally I believe that natural laws imply a law giver or in my case a creator that set those natural laws in order. Just ask any engineer or architect. They build and design by a set of pre fixed laws that they cannot break without suffering adversely. You seem to believe that natural laws imply no law giver and that just simply makes no sense at all.

Sin by its religious definition is the transgression of the laws set forth by the Creator of the world that those laws govern. You want to keep talking about eternal punishment but I keep steering you away because the laws themselves provide the reward of their observance or the penalties for their transgression. You don't have to believe in God if you don't want to but you can't deny the existence of laws that preserve life if you observe them and you can't deny that observing such laws is good and disregarding them is bad.

You wanted a nonreligious definition and I have successfully provided one for you. There is such a thing as doing the wrong thing Sixholden. If you act in a way that shortens your life it can be described as nothing else but wrong. You can't possibly call it right or neutral if it has directly shortened your life. But I think you fundamentally understand this which is why you keep trying to argue dogmatic themes instead because what I am putting forth defines existence by right or wrong. It inevitably makes you ask yourself if their truly can be no law giver if there are very real laws.

I'll tell you what. If you don't like me calling the causes of death as sinful then don't call the laws that those sinful things transgress laws. Can you do that? What would you call a predictable, reproducible process that governs how something should operate? Like it or not sin is the operative word for the activities that transgress these laws.
12 months ago: I'm not conflicted and I bear no burdens, at least not that kind. Engineers and architects don't concern themselves with who wrote the laws that govern their mechanical world, they know that it is not an imaginary being or any being. Nature and natural events control their world, not "an intelligent force or being".

It makes no sense because you can not envision a universe or existance without that being or force to control it. You can not survive on you own, you will die physically and spiritually without the belief that there is a being controlling you and all you see.

You are so limited in your vision as to not see the forest for the trees.

I am afraid you do not comprehend my words and how I have used them. Why would I mention eternal punishment except as a definition for a word you continue to misuse? I don't believe in it so the only reason I would mention it is as another reason you can not use SIN to describe what you are trying to describe. The word is already in use, it is taken, it is defined by its very long use in the written and spoken languages of the world as a religious term to describe an act that has repercussions after death. You are not a large enough force in this world to redefine it.

So now I have to come up with a new term because I objected to your incorrect use of an old one? Not gonna happen.
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12 months ago: Sin is a concept taught to ancient Jews. It is believed by Christians because Christianity branched from Judaism. Muslims don't believe in sin, neither do Buddhist or Hindus. In fact if you research world religions you will come to the startling realization that sin is the teaching from basically one source, the Jewish Torah, which is coincidently the books containing the laws for the Jewish nation. Sin is not as broadly recognized by religious fanatics' world over as you purport. Get it out of your head that it is this broad generic term used by lunatic religious bodies. Most religions teach freedom from obligation. Their rituals are designed to trade subjugation for immediate or long term physical reward. They do not teach obligation to community and the world around us. These doctrines are original to the Torah which introduced the concept of sin to the Jewish people. Sin as taught in the Torah is the recognition of one's wrong actions that cause harm to oneself or others. Sin as taught in the Torah is about accepting responsibility for our infractions to ourselves, each other, nature and nature's creator.


So, basically your qualm, anger and obsession with sin as a religious term is not a broad criticism of religion in general and their leaders but it is a direct affront to one God in particular (The creator), because it is from the Torah which sin gets its definition; all Christians know this. St. Paul wrote that without The Law (The Torah) there would be no knowledge of sin. The Torah was given to the Jewish people to give them laws for health and hygiene, for moral and civic behavior. The Torah established a basic foundation for how to deal with criminals and national affairs. It taught how to practice conservative farming and animal husbandry practices. In short it was the law for living. You want to make it something it is not. By over simplifying its purpose and origin you hope to negate its practical everyday usefulness. The law is more about human behavior with our environment then it is about going to hell! Hell is not a concept taught in the Torah. It is a Greek idea and it is accepted by Christians who are not Jews and believe in lots of other non-Jewish ideas such as the Trinity, Sunday worship, Christmas and Easter.


Your belief that the reward for sin is eternal hell comes from a mishmash of Greek mythology who did not believe in sin and Christian superstition which grew out of Dark Age's ignorance. It has nothing to do with being disciplined in mind and body. It has nothing to do with maximizing mental faculties. It has nothing to do with life span, longevity, health or physical prosperity. Sin is failure to live up to laws that extend your life. As I said before they have nothing to do with all that nonsense that you keep connecting it to. If there were no Torah there would be no knowledge of sin but there would still be sin and its result, death. We simply would be unaware of it, just like you are desperately trying to be unaware of it now. You don't have to believe in God, his law or the result of ignoring sound advice but it all still is very real. I can imagine a world without laws but why would I? They are real and I could imagine a world without a lawgiver but why would I those laws did not give themselves! Sin is what it is and you don't want to accept it because it puts you on the side of the fence you have been fighting against all these years. The last thing you want to do is become one of those holy rollers you so detest and despise, right!
12 months ago: Christian Religion 33%, Muslim Religion 22% of the world's population, I guess 55+% is not very many of the worlds population so no one knows a definition of sin that is different from yours. Judaism is only 0.21% but since none of these 3+billion people talk to any one else, the idea behind the word is little known outside their church buildings.

As for your statement that Muslims don't believe in sin, you are wrong. They do not believe in Original Sin. Babies are born sinless and can sin after the age of reason, puberty, and are encouraged to pray at seven years old.

Original Sin was invented to give a reason for children to be forced to adhere to religious teachings from an early age.

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve knew right from wrong before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, that tells me that the writers of the Bible knew that humans know the difference between right and wrong without every being forced to read their book or being forced to listen to their teachings. In other words, humans do not need the religious crap to live their lives correctly.

Me? Obsessed with sin? I'm not the one who is trying to re-invent the definition.
12 months ago: Muslims believe in predestination. They believe that Allah is in full control of all human activity, therefore humans cannot sin, because God controls their actions. Sin is willful transgression which according to them man cannot do. What they say people do is forget which is what all their ritual is for to help people remember. Based upon your percentages you just lost 22% and are down to 33% but even then the Christian concept of religion is taken directly from the Jewish Torah so it still goes back to the Law given to Moses a Jew.

You talk about sin being a universally accepted religious teaching but it is not. As I've shown you it is clearly from the Torah. As for people believing in it, of course they do. You just proved that in your second to last statement. Even you are adamantly convinced about its place of prominence in the human psyche. You have to be because every society has laws and all laws codify basic behaviors as wrong or right. This fundamental morality that we all seem to share is not taken from nature. We did not evolve it because animals kill; commit incest, homosexuality, rape, etc. without holding each other accountable.

Yet we humans teach each other to resist these urges as wrong. Obedience to the law is a learned behavior and it goes against our natural urges. It helps to preserve the life that we naturally seem to want to destroy. So where does the law come from? Where did we get it from? If we don't naturally seek to be good then why do we teach it? Why do we persist to hold up a higher standard than what our natural mind demands? You may choose to give the transgression of law (sin) spiritual connotations and then blame a global religious consciousness but your own words betray you. "Humans know the difference between right and wrong." Is what you said. Well then you must believe in law and sin. Because they are the same exact ideas!
12 months ago: You should be aware that I understand what you are getting at. You don't refute the validity or importance of having laws that govern everything around us. What you resist is feeling obligated to them for any reason. This is why you reject the law giver. If the laws have no law giver then they can't be enforced and the repercussions of transgressing them are not connected to their transgression. Transgressing them then is no more wrong than obeying them is right and it is all arbitrary.

There then can be no wrong and if that is the case then sinful things which are wrong have to be relabeled because sin is no longer wrong because there is no law giver and consequently no law and no wrong. But all this stems from separating the law from the lawgiver. So go ahead prove to me there is no law giver by demonstrating to me that laws do not come from a law making body. But if you can't do this then concede to yourself at least (if not to me) that there is a giant elephant in the room that you are desperately trying to avoid.
12 months ago: Your law giver is an imaginary being, mine is a natural force that does not demand subservience only that I abide by things I can not change, it also does not demand tribute, faith in its existence nor confession and forgiveness of wrongs I may have committed. All that is required is not to put my finger under the falling hammer and I will not get a smashed finger. My "obligation" to natural laws is simple self-preservation, disregard them and it could physically painful if not deadly. My obligation to society's laws is more in the nature of the Golden Rule. I do not like all the laws of our society but as a citizen and not wishing to spend time confined, I will abide by them as necessary. Working to change them is also something for me to do as time permits.

Yours is not a natural force because it performs actions (according to the myth) with forethought and demands subservience to it by tribute, faith in its existence and public confession and begging for forgiveness of wrongs "possibly" committed against said imaginary being. Unfortunately for those who believe in the myth, those wrongs are many and vary from one religious leader to the next (even in the same religion), from one day to the next, from one race to the next. The only thing they all agree on is tribute, a bit more tribute and maybe a bit more tomorrow. That and idolatry, yeah I said it, the forbidden (according to the tenants of a few religions) worship of "things", be it a painting, book, statue, building, piece of jewelry or dead body, it is practiced in every temple, tabernacle, mosque, chapel, synagogue or other place of religious service on the planet that is dedicated to Judaism, Islam, Christianity and a few other widespread religions.

I do not believe you are capable of believing in a natural force that is not a sentient one. Even more so, one that is indifferent to humans, this planet or even this universe, one that has no beginning nor an end, a force that is considered a force just to give it a name, a description, a label. Without that ability, you will not be able to see my point of view without continuing to put words in my mouth and ideas in my head that are NOT what I intended for you to understand from what I have written. My apologies for not being better at voicing my thoughts in a way that does not confuse.
12 months ago: There are no tributes paid in the Jewish or Christian religions of which we speak regarding law and sin so my point is still valid. As for confessions the Christian religion teaches that we should confess or admit our wrongs to one another not to a god as a bartering ploy and the Jewish religion teaches to own up to our wrongs and take responsibility for them. What you call tributes are for the benefit of the wrong doer. It applies a cost to the wrong action. Much like a tax on cigarettes is a deterrent to smoking. It is not for the appeasement of a deity. If the lawgiver is imaginary then so are the laws. Are the laws imaginary? Where do they come from? What is the natural explanation for them? And don't say they have always been there because that is tantamount to religious faith which you frown upon so don't resort to it. If there is laws to uphold right then there is also wrong if we disregard them. Sin is transgression of those laws.


There is nothing confusing about what you wrote sixholden, nor am I putting words in your mouth or in your head. I have acknowledged already that you do not believe in God and I said that was fine with me because it is your right to live and believe as you wish. But you should understand that I am following your logic to its inevitable and logical conclusion. Your disbelief in God therefore means that any action that I attribute to the creator you will attribute to a mindless force. Sin plays no role, as far as you are concerned, in this Godless universe because sin, according to you, is a religious word. You see no connection between religious right and wrong and natural or moral right and wrong. Am I correct so far? Is this not what you are telling me?


This is why I wrote what I did because the crux of the argument rests in separating the laws that guide every aspect of our lives, our world and the universe from its source. You see, a mindless force is not a source it is a product of those laws. For instance the wind, there would be no wind without a fluctuation in temperature and atmospheric pressure caused by the rotation of our planet its moon and the sun. The wind is a force indeed but it is not the source of its own force it is a product of it. There are laws that govern these forces and the origin of these laws is not found in the forces they govern but outside of it.


This is why I ask: What is the source of these laws? For you it is an unanswerable mystery beyond the scope of modern science, to be accepted as de facto, some might say by faith but you frown upon that word too because of its religious connotations even though faith is employed in all kinds of secular activity as well. So if by faith you choose to close the door to some possibilities but by faith you choose to accept the validity of others then doesn't that mean that your logic is just as flawed as the ones you claim are wrong? Don't get me wrong here. I am not arguing your right to believe what you do. I am arguing the logic of your arbitrary belief.


I do so because you presented sin as a religious term that validates the human source of belief in God. Whereas I have presented it as the absence of law, the source of chaos that leads to death and in my presentation this "great mystery" of where these laws or lawlessness comes from I have posed a question: Can there be laws if there are no lawgiver? Can a manufactured object have no manufacturer? If we are alive because we came from living parents then can the source of all life be dead?
12 months ago: Get to this.

If everyone could at least agree that the word "sin" means doing what we all know to be wrong (some things are universally wrong; to the chagrin of the liberal and INTOLERANT).

From there, coming to the point of not just acknowledging, but turning from that garbage on purpose (repentance) and making no excuses for it outside of our own selves (acceptance of responsibility).....and resolving to strive for a higher level of living...

...We would have a different world, wouldn't we?

I think so.

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